Having just attended a lecture at the American Museum of Natural History in NY, the really scary thing to me is that climate doesn't change in a linear manner. So we push the system and push the system and at some point POP! there can be a fast, massive change. We just don't know when exactly that might happen. Could be 30 years, could be 300. We just don't know. So far we are exceeding many of the worst case scenarios of the models in terms of amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, melting of ice shelves and so forth. We just don't know enough. In terms of ppm we are now at about 385 ppm of CO2. The last time the planet was this warm was about 3 million years ago when the arctic was a tropics zone. With that level of ice melt/sea rise, much of NYC would be under water, as well as southern Fl. and forget New Orleans. And this isn't even to mention the whole methane issue. I'm officialy very, very afraid.

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I know, JD, you're right - officially, I'm scared silly, too, but unless we're willing to pull the covers over our heads, stick our respective thumbs in our mouths, and wimper, we have to do what we can, talk to as many people as we can, influence as many legislators as we can, and be downright pugnacious. The average person doesn't yet 'get it', and we have a responsibility to see that more DO. Nature is capricious - we might just be able to forestall the worst - teach your children - and hope the'll be around to teach theirs.

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I agree, parrish. With natural feedbacks accelerating faster than we expected, the evidence keeps growing that we must slash our net greenhouse emissions down close to zero in the next 2 or 3 decades, starting now. I now sincerely doubt there is any chance of avoiding catstrophe without making people really afraid for their children and grandchildren. In some circumstances, fear is a very necessary emotion. It can cause us to freeze up or look away, which is why fear tactics have generally been avoided so far, but it also galvanizes us to radically adjust our priorities. I suggest we need to communicate much more loudly and clearly what is happening now due to warming and the likely developments over the next few decades. It's hard for most of us to understand the massive economic and security effects that the melting of Himalayan glaciers will have for all of us - it's not just 'out there'. There can be few subjects better than climate change 101 to raise levels of education about our interdependent world.

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Anyone who cares should, where ever possible, contract with their electricity supplier to provide 100% non-fossil power (wind, nuclear, Solar, or hydro). It will probably cost more than what you now pay, but for the average US household it would save thousands of pounds of CO2 emission annually. (Electricity produced by burning coal creates about 1 pound of CO2 for each kiloWatt-hour of electricity delivered, and coal produces about 50% of the electricity used in the US.)

And that is important. The observed rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 shows that natural processes can annually absorb roughly 15 billion tonnes of humanity's excess fossil-derived CO2. That's about 5000 pounds of CO2 per person, and in terms of our existing energy sources and usage that isn't much. For example if you drive 11,000 miles alone in a Toyota Prius you will emit your share of fossil CO2 for an entire year.

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Couple of things here...over the millenia land mass has shifted and the relationship between land and water has therefore affected weather systems...NY for example lay near the equator in the past...the artic's landmass was also elsewhere and lets not forget pole shifts - all supported by modern science.

And, although we are spewing tons of CO2 into our atmosphere, there are some in the scientific community who think some of this heating is coming from outside out planet. Understanably, this is not a widelt accepted notion (at this point)because we are focused on blaming ourselves and may fail to accept other components.

BH - Before Humans - ice ages and extreme heat have come and gone in an instant relative to geologic time.

We may find that human activity is being aided by coincidence.

In the end, climate change is repsonsible for past mass extinctions. Modern science cannot expect to posses the power to change the course the this planet's fate...in reality human kind has very little expertise in these matters. Any leverage that we could have supplied should have been managed long ago...critical mass is here now, its not 300 years from now.

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To those who want to know more about sudden climate change I recommend Fred Pearce's excellent book With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change, Beacon Press, 2007. Pearce is longtime New Scientist magazine's environment and climate science writer.

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(1) My impression is that most people don't have the Terrapass mindset. Keeping track of their carbon emissions isn't a priority, especially if they've gotten slammed by recent economic events. A likely response to us "educating" (i.e. nagging) them is, "The sky hasn't fallen yet, and I've been hearing that it'll happen any day now since (pick a decade)."

(2) Carbon emissions slow during economic recessions. Between emitting less carbon and having a job (which might involve producing things that emit carbon), my guess is most people would choose the latter.

(2) Preindustrial carbon levels were about 280 parts per million. The number in 2007 was 384 ppm and rising by about 2 ppm per year. According to the science I've read, runaway global warming will happen somewhere between 400 and 450 ppm. If this is true, this means we have between 6 and 30 years before it all hits an irreversible fan.

(3) To prevent runaway carbon, we would have had to have stopped polluting around 100 years ago, so I guess it's already irreversible.

(4) To bring the atmosphere back to sustainable levels of carbon emissions, we would all have to start living like Africans. That continent has about a billion people; the United States has 306 million. Africa emits about 10% as much carbon as the U.S. Hence Americans, to live sustainably, would have to lower their carbon emissions to 1/30 of what they do now. This means buying locally produced goods (or producing your own), not using ac or heat, and walking everywhere. Likely?

(5) If I'm remotely close to being correct in these conclusions, our only hope is a technological fix.

(6) The sky isn't falling, but it's looking awfully heavy.

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Along with Fred Pearce's excellent book, may I suggest Mark Lynas' SIX DEGREES,in which he indicates what will happen at each increased degree of warmth. That's the book that jolted me into shifting my way of thinking and realizing that climate change is THE priority. Since Science has been allowed back from an eight year exile, we are hearing more, but still on a level of moving away from foreign dependence on oil, rather than the nitty-gritty as Lynas' book describes. After reading that, if you don't 'get it' - you are either willfully ignorant or clinically depressed. And since we DO 'get it', we have to get as many people as possible to read, think, and make changes in their life. It's a win-win situation - using CFL's, conserving water, reducing your car mileage, etc. saves money as well as cutting down on CO2. Who can't be enticed by that? And there is power in numbers - one grain of sand is nothing, but enough grains make the Sahara! Write letters to your local newspapers, donate the above named books to your library, to book clubs, buy CFL's for everyone on your street, give presentations to any group that will listen - and have them pass it on to their friends. Some will respond - some won't. I'm a realist, too - this is what it is- the denialists may be right, but I'm not willing to take that chance.

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About the only thing that has any chance of being heard by the hard core ceniers (most of whom now admit that the climate is changing, but now retreate to denying that human behavior has any role in it and imply that human behavior change can do nothing about it) is this:

Even if climate change were total bullshit, and human behavior (greenhouse gases, etc) have not significant role in it, the changes that are proposed by the many who believe we need to make changes to deal with the real or imagine changes comeing (massive creation of solar and wind power, improved energy efficiencty, etc, etc) would get us off our dependence on overseas oil. Even G.W. Bush, no tree hugger there and an oil man himself, expressed how important it is for us to get ourselves energy independent.

The really hard core deniers (whose motives for their attachment to their "truth" are hard to understand) will, I suspect, be unmoved by any sort of logic, but many who are simply confused by the doubts the deniers raise are, I find, open to realizing that, regardless of whether human caused climate chance is proven beyond all doubt, that the same strategies that would be used to address it could be of massive benefit to us if implemented.

For example, the coalition that T. Boon Pickens seems to pull together pushing for massive wind energy development is not just from those whose concerns are largely environmental. Simlarly, Woosley, the former head of the CIA, a avid advocate of massive investment in plug-in-hybrid cars, says getting our country off oil is a core national security issue.

In short: In some cases rather than arguing about what the scientific absolute certaintly is about climate causes and cures, perhaps it's better to see if you can get somoone to agree on what they, we, and or goverment should be DOING.

Alex

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Anonymous,

I may not agree with your exact words, "...man has no significant affect..." because I believe there is a coincidental confluence between man's unwhitting activity, and, changing forces outside our planet. But I certainly agree with your comment in general.

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To the moderator (is that Adam?):

Although I normally bend over backwards in support of free and open discourse, I have to admit I tend to be sympathetic in this case your decision to delete postings that denigrate others with whom they disagree, as well as as th those and in your considered opinion in your role as moderator do not contribute to, or are clearly counter to, the purpose of this group.

And anything that, in your opinion, would drain time and energy (such as is likely the sort of discussion that started to stem from that offending post) from our purpose here -- one of which is to get on, in whatever small or large ways we can, move ahead on contributing to addressing the issues of climate change consructively.

If in that role, you made the judgement that such a discussion would actually result in some real new light (rather than just smoke and heat) for the poster or anyone else, I suppose you would have left the posting there.

The decision of when it's a wise use of one's recources to continue a dialog with someone who appears to one to be off-track is not a simple one.

In this case my metaphore is that when it looks to me like there's a fire in my kitchen I'm reluctant to take time discussing whether it's really a serious threat, the exact details of how it started, whether some other fire someplace else was arson or sarted by natural causes, or whether we can be _absolutely_ certain that the fire extinquisher I'm about to activate is quite big enough to extinquish it.

As a moderator of several email groups myself, I appreciate the difficulty of your position in likely wanting to balance between maximum dialog and keeping the dialog on track. relevant, and civil... and appreciate your work

My two cents.

Alex Censor
(aka Computer Doctor)

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Try this one...I am not passing this along as gospel Adam, but as possibility.

www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html - 49k

I am skeptical about humans being blamed for all global warming. The fact that we have covered our world with our waste does not preclude an antagonistic agent outside our earth system. And although modern abstract society no longer worships sun gods or water gods, we still do not understand how solar weather affects this planet. That we have nicely done away with human scarifice as a way of appeasing our weather gods relieves our future burden.

We may not have the answers, but it is foolish to pursue only a narrow view.

Still, we should make every attempt to clean ourselves up, no argument!

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It seems to me mindless and a waste of energy and time to argue about who or what is responsible for global warming. I could care less, at this point. Sun spot, black holes, normal activity - who cares? The point is - it's happening. Start from here, now. I'm an old lady - I don't have the will or energy to nit-pick for the sake of one-upping someone else. I DO have children. That tends to focus the mind on what's important. And, sadly, for the first time EVER, I'm glad I don't have grandchildren.

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Adam,

I performed a quick search and copied the first one - why I wrote not gospel.

I am in an Environmental Science profession. Science does not have all of the answers, we do not know everything. Some of our answers are skewed by politics, some by money and some to prevent or create fear.

Your last two sentences hark back to a time when "we knew the world was flat" ...you don't know what you don't know and "time to move on" says ignore other possibilities. I wrote way above "...coincidental confluences..." We may well find that our activities are being exaserbated by forces from outside earth bound systems...we may also be able to say/write that if we humans did not deposit so much crap into our environment that those outside forces might have a much smaller effect. I do not dispute our poor environmental activities or the that something should be done to clean ourselves up. I dispute the notion that you know the problem is contained here and only on earth...that hasn't been proven. Why? Because we do not know...it's occuring now.

If the link I copied degrades my credability, then erase it and re-read my post. That was a poor choice on my part.

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Parish,

This is not a debate about one-upping anyone. ...nit-picking is a failure to see the bigger picture. So you are correct...but I am not nit-picking or splitting what may appear as thin air.

For all concerned, prove that there are no other external earth-bound effects.

Your weapon isn't your credible sources of information, possibly meant to discredit other forms of credible information, however misnderstood.

Pure science is open minded and the bigger the problem the longer the mind must stay open.

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The percieved flat world was based upon knowledge of that day, lacking by today's sophistication, sure.

Our knowledge of our solar system today is in many ways no different from out flat world era but on a much larger scale - both time and space...the space between the size of the world back then and common "agreed" majority knowledge - most of which was wrong.

Yes, my proposition might be bland, it wasn't meant to be anything but relative truth. The fact is, it is the truth, in black and white terms.

I did not advance a bogus theory, only, that we do not know if there there is a coincidental factor. There is nothing invalid about asking or posing such a question...I'm actually puzzled by your cured, concrete approach to this question, very un-scientific.

What can't we have both ways? Are you suggesting that science either knows everything or nothing? It is both ways Adam; we know a lot about some things and very little about other things.

My point is, we do not know if there is an outside force aiding the warming here on earth and you cannot dispute this. And my friend, I have not retreated into any kind of mysticism.
Closing one's mind to potential phenomenon beyond his or her scope of comprehension or information set is a retreat.

Your last paragraph may not contain vulgarities Adam, but it is certainly an attempt to try to discredit free thinking. My question is valid and that is all it is, a valid question. That my question is theoretical in nature shouldn't burden you at all; all good science begins with theory, some more concret than others.

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Adam,

We feel your pain.

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Okay let us all line up behind Adam and blindly go into the future without question.

John, debate, not sarchasm.

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Adam and all concerned,

A useful phrase when attempting to correlate new hypothosis with current thinking.

It's not the things we don't know that fool us.

It's the things we do know that ain't so

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A fool has a closed mind. An open mind accepts other possibilities, no matter how slim they may seem at first blush.

In reality, earth's heating 'may be' our fault, all of it. But if I were a policy maker I would devote a portion of my observation budget to what-ifs - because the heating is a current phenomenon geologically and as such we do not have enough data to absolutely rule out everything else. I would want to rule out any other factors so that when I do have to make policy, my policy is effective and on track - in the right direction with limited resources.

There are obvious pathways that we can take to help reduce green house gas emissions and Terrapass and Adam do a great job. If I have a beef,it is with a somewhat closed mind atack upon other ideas or possiblities. That is dangerous...I'm not inlcined to blindly follow an idea over a cliff nor turn my head to an oncoming disaster. But one has to look both ways long enough to make the right choice.

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Hi Michael,

You wrote, in part --
"In reality, earth's heating 'may be' our fault, all of it. But if I were a policy maker I would devote a portion of my observation budget to what-ifs - because the heating is a current phenomenon geologically and as such we do not have enough data to absolutely rule out everything else. I would want to rule out any other factors so that when I do have to make policy, my policy is effective and on track - in the right direction with limited resources."

I couldn't agree more that "earth's heating 'may be' our fault, all of it." In the sense that the "may be" suggests there's _some_ uncertainty.
And of course with something as complicated as climate we will never have enough data to completely rule out everything else.

To that I would add two things:
The minor caveat is that even if it ISN'T _all_ human caused, we'd want to mitigate the part that was, I'd hope you'd agree.

The major caveat is that we only get ONE planet to experiment with and "study" here.

To put in another way:
Let's say, for sake of discussion, that the credible scientific community and the dates was EQUALLY divided on the questions of whether climate change is human caused, dangerous, is near some serious tipping points, and could be mitigated by massive, possibly expensive and possibly seriously inconvenient and politically difficult, changes in our personal and policy behaviors.
(Personally, my own reading is that the consensus is indeed suggesting that's all true, but please set that aside.)

Let's go even further, and imagine that 60% of the evidence and the credible scientific community said "None of that is true" -- and Call that "The THEORY-BE bet" and 40% said that's ALL true-- and call THAT "the THEORY-BE bet."

In that case we would still have to, take action based on the THEORY-B.

Why? Because when you place a bet you have to consider the outcomes of both winning the bet and of losing it.

If we go with THEORY-A it's reasonable, as those advocating it, sometimes called deniers, usually say or imply, we should continue most economic and personal behavior on the present path -- business-as-usual (no carbon caps, etc). Maybe do some more research on climatology, etc, but no major changes.

So if THEORY-A folks are right we at best protect ourselves from expensive and unnecessary policy changes, possibly preventing mass unemployment cause by some people's fears that going green would shut down industries, force us to live on less energy.
BUT, if they're WRONG, and we delay proactive massive changes we would at best suffer massive problems and later be mitigating them at much higher cost and at worst find we have committed the next generation to living in a hellish world possibly even threatening the existence of civilization.

Then consider what happens if we place our bets with the B-Group, perhaps called the climate alarmists:

If they're right and we immediately institute proactive massive changes we would at best prevent massive problems at a lower cost than if we delay and have saved the next generation from and preserved the existence of civilization. AND at best we'd have simultaneously gotten our country off dependence on overseas oil (which virtually everyone agrees would be excellent), created a robust economy that's sustainable, and become an envied world leader in technologies and policies the whole world needs.

If they're WRONG, and _best_, by following their recommendations, we'd still have gotten our country off dependence on overseas oil (which virtually everyone agrees would be excellent), created a robust economy that's sustainable, and become an envied world leader in technologies and policies the whole world needs.

At WORST, according to the worst of the scenarios the deniers project we'd have don unnecessary serious economic damage to our country, left millions unemployed by throttling our carbon producing industries, etc.
But it's possible to RECOVER from an economic catastrophe (the world recovered from the great depression) but not from a climate tipping point.

---
Simply put, it's a clear case of "apply the cautionary principle" and prepare for the worst.
Or in other language "not doing anything proactive _even_ if the risk is only a 'may be' and/or 'all the evidence isn't in yet' or 'there's some evidence to the contrary' , it's a chance we just can't afford to take because the consequences are too serious.

We have only one planet, and have to take the "better safe than sorry" position.

In that context, suggesting that there's serious enough doubt about human-caused climate change to justify delaying acting against it (statements such as Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) declaring that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”) are dangerous.

In short, in _this_ _context, of discussions of "what do we do now," while as a scientist myself I welcome scientific inquiry, raising doubts about the role of human beings climate change WITHout making crystal clear that those doubt do not justify inaction, is dangerous.

The supreme court famously ruled that "the right to free speech does not extend to shouting 'Fire' in a crowed theater."

To reverse that metaphor: The right to question scientific findings and the right to open inquiry does not extend to shouting "everything's OK, you can all remain seated, this hasn't been proven yet and could be a hoax" when the building supervisor has announced "a phone call came in saying there may be a bomb in the building and everyone needs to evacuate."

Does that give you any clearity/understanding as to why your, although possibly logical, comments and doubts, and wait-and-see implications, were not welcomed at this point?

Respectfully,
Alex

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Alex,

A welcome dialogue, thank you.

I do believe we should be making as many changes as possible right now because the cost will be much higher the longer we wait -and reversable to me means within some life time period, not a few million years. Still, we have to make the bet, I agree. We cannot give up.

So I do not advocate inaction nor do I see the human inlfunece as insignificant. I do become alarmed, if from a philosophical bent, when I feel a door is being shut that ought to stay open.

And my overall emphasis is we should be looking everywhere, here on earth and outside earth's bound systems...every door must remain open so that we identify every potential avenue, if to prevent a tip.

A couple of examples here and there.

We do not yet know what sun spot influence is on earth's lower atmosphere...we're just beginning to understand the correlation between maximum sunspot activity and low sunspot activity...and some believe that the very hot, high speed solar wind that come from larger sun spots - at low sunspot activity - may be responsible for some of our changes...ironically these may be cooling our atmosphere. We do not know the correlation because we did not and still do not have a base of information that is large enough...not is our technology good enough.

Our land management practices account for a yet to be determined percentage of CO2 increase because we are eliminating a living system that uses CO2 in respiration - this is my field.

I am rambling Alex, and I am boring myself at this point. We need to look everywhere and keep an open mind, that's all. I do not believe we are okay, but emphasis must also be placed upon our land management practices and we must keep an eye on outer space. Clean efficient cars are a must as are efficient light bulbs. That's not enough. Keep looking.

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A correction. Larger sunspots should read coronal holes above - two different components.

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